I tend to go to the 100 yen store a lot. Not only is it ridiculously cheap most of the time, but the stuff you can get there blows my mind every time. Anything from living room cushions to emergency lighting and a mold to shape a boiled egg into the face of Doraemon. I need not sing its praises, but I think it’s one of the coolest stores ever.

However, with great convenience comes great … possible inconvenience (depending on how observant you are and not a complete fool like some people)

So I went to a shopping center and noticed they had a promotion through LINE where if you befriend said shopping center, you would get a 500 yen coupon if you bought more than 3000 yen worth of stuff. Great deal I thought. Me and my SO got one ticket each, so we decided to get some important stuff we need for our home. OFF we went to BookOFF and got 3000 yen worth of games for the PlayStation and Wii. One ticket down, one to go.

We passed a Daiso on the way and decided to get 30 items (or 29, because of taxes I guess). A good way to get rid of the guilt. Often big stores do not honor coupons given by shopping centers, so we checked with the clerk, and yes, they accept it. Great!

So we gathered the items and got some really good stuff of varying usefulness. When it became time to pay, our mistake surfaced. We forgot to check for payment options.

You see, it really depends on which 100 yen store, how you can pay. Some are very open to credit cards, electric money such as Edy or T-points. Others, like this Daiso, only accepted cash (and WAON for some reason). And here we were, cashless and hopeless.

So we did our best apology bow and left the stuff at the register.

I let this be a lesson in always checking for payment options BEFORE spending an hour collecting and carrying all the things! Even if one store takes credit cards, does not mean another one does.